2025 ChamberFest Faculty

Ariana Falk currently serves as Education Director for the Worcester Chamber Music Society and director of the Neighborhood Strings and ChamberFest programs. She combines performance with a passion for forging new paths in teaching artistry.

Ariana received a Doctorate of Musical Arts from Boston University and Master of Music and Artist Diploma degrees from the Yale School of Music, where she was recipient of the Aldo Parisot Prize. She received her Bachelor of Arts in English from Yale College. She has appeared as soloist with orchestras around North America, including Portland’s Columbia Symphony, the Olympia Symphony, Yale Bach Society, and the Sounds of Stow Orchestras. A review in Portland’s Oregonian said “Falk was terrific; her tone was solid and appropriately dark, and she carefully calibrated her path from lyrically mysterious beginnings on to a blistering, biting climax.” She is a former Fellow at Community MusicWorks, the Providence organization committed to creating an urban community through music education and performance. Ariana is currently on the music faculty of Clark University.

As a recitalist and chamber musician, she has appeared as a guest artist on the Marlboro College and Longy School of Music Faculty Artist series, live on WGBH Boston and WVPR, and with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. She has collaborated with distinguished musicians including Menahem Pressler and Paul Katz and toured with the Grammy Award-nominated Yale Cellos,. Notable past performances include appearances at Carnegie Hall, Jordan Hall, Sprague Hall at Yale, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and the Chapel Royal series in Brighton, U.K.

Ariana was a Fulbright Scholar to Germany, and she now serves as Music Director of the Massachusetts Fulbright Association. She has served on the chamber music faculty of Brown University and on the faculty of the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. Other appearances include the Norfolk Music Festival, the Garth Newel Music Center, the Banff Centre, Al Kamandjati Festival, and the Juilliard, Great Lakes, and Deer Valley festivals.

A passionate advocate for contemporary music, Ariana has premiered dozens of new works and is committed to performing and celebrating the music of our time. She worked with Joan Tower, was a member of the Norfolk Contemporary Ensemble, and gave the Heidelberg premiere of Luciano Berio’s Sequenza XIV .

A native of Portland, Ariana made her solo debut with the “Live from the Schnitzer” orchestra playing Elgar at age fifteen. As part of the Charivari String Quartet with her violist twin brother, she appeared on the pilot season of “From the Top” in Boston’s Jordan Hall.

“Things done right..”(Boston Globe), “…Excellent left hand..”(Toronto Star), and “…lovely tonal bloom…”(LeDROIT), describe performances of violinist Krista Buckland Reisner. Over the past 25 years, she has performed with well-known and diverse musicians from Leonard Bernstein to John Williams, Anton Kuerti, Placido Domingo, Brian Wilson, Smokey Robinson, and Diana Krall. Krista has performed across North America, Europe, Russian and New Zealand, including performances at Carnegie Hall, La Scala, and the Boston Esplanade on July 4th with the Boston Pops.

Passionate about opera, Krista served as Principal Second Violin of the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra, Concertmaster of Opera Boston, performed Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” with the Arizona Opera and played in the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra. An early music aficionado, Krista performed with Canada’s Aradia, Boston Baroque, and is currently a tenured member of the Handel and Haydn Society. She is also on the roster of the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra.

Krista’s love of chamber music led her to join WCMS 14 years ago, after playing in the QX string quartet for many years prior with fellow WCMSers Peter Sulski and Rohan Gregory. Her commitment to bringing this art form to the Worcester community also included taking on administrative roles within WCMS as the organization grew. These included acting as General Manager and managing the Summer Festival and Music Camp for six years. In addition to maintaining her active chamber music and orchestra life, Krista’s musical interests include exploring other musical styles and instruments, including jazz improv, Swedish nykleharpa, and piano.

Krista also holds an MBA from Babson College and currently heads up the Project Management Office at Takeoff Technologies, an industrial automation start-up serving the e-commerce grocery space.

Rohan Gregory is a violinist who has cultivated a wide-ranging expertise in chamber music, new music and world music. He has played with the Apple Hill Chamber Players, the Ancora Ensemble and award-winning Boccherini Ensemble and was also a founding member for ten years of the Arden String Quartet, performing new music concerts in New York, Boston, Amsterdam and St. Petersburg, Russia.  He has recorded on for Centaur records.

On the world music scene, Rohan has toured extensively. His travels have taken him to Europe with the Klezmatics, to Thailand with multi-ethnic flute player Abbie Rabinowitz, to India with the Indo-jazz group Natraj and to the U.S. west coast with Sophia Bilides Greek Folk Ensemble. Recently he has played nationally and internationally with the flamenco guitarist Juanito Pascual. Locally, Rohan is a member of the Lyric Opera Company and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. He coaches chamber music for the Walnut Hill School, teaches at the College of the Holy Cross, and spends his summers coaching at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber music in New Hampshire, at Music at Port Milford in Ontario, Canada, and at WCMS’s ChamberFest Music Camp.

William Kirkley is in demand as an orchestral musician, recitalist, and chamber performer, and his playing has been labeled “emotional, committed, and intensely exciting” by the Boston Globe. The Boston Musical Intelligencer called him “a musician in total command of his instrument.”

Bill’s orchestral playing has been heard in some of the world’s great concert halls, including Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall in New York, Symphony Hall Boston, Orchestra Hall Chicago, the Royal Albert Hall and the Royal Festival Hall in London. He is principal clarinetist and one of the founders of the Lexington Symphony, principal clarinetist of Cape Ann Symphony, solo bass clarinetist with Orchestra of Indian Hill and the Albany Symphony. As a guest clarinetist, he can often be heard performing with the Boston Symphony, Boston Pops, Boston Ballet, and City Ballet in NYC.

Bill is sought out as a concerto soloist and has been featured with the North Arkansas Symphony, Mesquite Symphony, North Shore Philharmonic, Gordon Symphony, Cape Ann Symphony, and the Lexington Symphony. He has recorded extensively on such labels as CRI, SEAMUS, New World, Albany, Naxos, and Centaur. His playing has been heard on WGBH Boston and the BBC from London. If you play SimCity BuildIt! you’ve heard his playing behind the game.

A performer dedicated to educating, Bill has served on the music faculties of University of Southwestern Louisiana, Brandeis University, UMass Boston, and is currently on the music faculties of Gordon College, Berklee College of Music, the College of the Holy Cross, and Indian Hill Music. Bill attended the University of Arkansas, Northwestern University and Southern Methodist University, where his major teachers were Robert Marcellus, Anthony Gigliotti, and Robert Umiker.

Bill is an avid lover of the outdoors, and lives in New Hampshire with his adorable Scottie Dogs.

Randall Hodgkinson is the Grand Prize Winner of the International American Music Competition sponsored by Carnegie Hall and the Rockefeller Foundation.  He’s performed with orchestras in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Boston, Cleveland and abroad in Italy and Iceland. In addition, he has performed numerous recital programs spanning the repertoire from J.S. Bach to Donald Martino. He is the newest member of the Worcester Chamber Music Society, and he performs the four-hand and two-piano repertoire with his wife Leslie Amper. Mr. Hodgkinson’s festival appearances include Blue Hill (Maine), BargeMusic, Chestnut Hill Concerts (Madison, Connecticut), Seattle Chamber Music Festival, and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Recently, Mr. Hodgkinson gave the world premiere of the Piano Concerto by Gardner Read at the Eastman School in Rochester. He’s a faculty member of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston and the Longy School of Music in Cambridge.